CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — María Corina Machado has long been the face of resistance to Venezuela’s 26-year ruling party. Now, she may become a symbol of peace, too.
Machado, the Venezuelan opposition powerhouse who commandeered millions of Venezuelans to reject President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s election, on Friday was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work “to achieve a just and peaceful transition” of power in the South American country. The award also recognized the seasoned politician for being a “unifying figure” in the fractured opposition.
The award, however, is being granted at a time when opposition supporters are questioning her leadership, including her embrace of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy, which has seen Venezuelan migrants sent to an infamous prison in Central America and deadly U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean.
Here are some things to know about Machado:
Engineer-turned-politician
Machado, an industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate, began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the non-governmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.
She drew the anger of Chávez and his allies the following year for her Oval Office meeting with then-U.S. President George W. Bush. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.
Her full transformation into a politician would come until 2010, when she was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, receiving more votes than any aspiring lawmaker ever. It was from this position that she boldly interrupted Chávez as he addressed the legislature and called his expropriation of businesses theft.
“An eagle does not hunt a fly,” he responded. The exchange is seared in voters’ memories.
Presidential aspirations
Machado, 58, sought Venezuela’s presidency for the first time in 2012, but she finished third in the race to be the presidential candidate for the Democratic Unity Roundtable.
The ruling party-controlled National Assembly ousted Machado in 2014 and, months later, the Comptroller General’s Office barred her from public office for a year, citing an alleged omission on her asset declaration form. That same year, the government accused her of being involved in an alleged plot to kill Maduro, who succeeded Chávez after his 2013 death.
Machado, a free-market firebrand, denied the charge, calling it an attempt to silence her and opposition members who had called tens of thousands of people to the streets in anti-government protests that at times turned violent.
She kept a low profile for the next nine years, supporting some anti-Maduro initiatives and election boycotts and criticizing opposition efforts to negotiate with the government. By the time she announced a new bid for the presidency in 2023, her careful messaging had softened her image as an elitist hard-liner, allowing her to connect with skeptics on both sides.
She won the opposition’s presidential primary with more than 90% of the vote, unifying the faction — as noted by the Nobel Prize committee. But ruling-party loyalists who control the country’s judiciary kept her from appearing on the ballot, which forced her to throw her support behind former diplomat Edmundo González.
She hiked overpasses, walked highways, rode motorcycles, sought shelter in supporters’ homes and saw her closest collaborators be arrested as she kept campaigning across Venezuela. She repeatedly joined thousands of supporters chanting in unison “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” in rallies and asked them to vote for González, a virtual unknown who had never run for office before.
Brutal repression
González crushed Maduro by a more than two-to-one margin, according to voting machine records collected by the opposition and validated by international observers. Still, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, loyal to the ruling party, declared Maduro the winner of the July 28, 2024, contest.
People protested the results across the country, and the government responded with full force, arresting more than 2,000 people and accusing them of plotting to oust Maduro and sow chaos. Most were released over the following months, but the government simultaneously arrested dozens of people who actively participated in Machado’s efforts last year.
Some of Machado’s closest collaborators, including her campaign manager, avoided prison by sheltering for more than a year at a diplomatic compound in Caracas, where they remained until May, when they fled to the U.S.
González went into exile in Spain after he became the subject of an arrest warrant, and Machado has not been seen in public since January, when she joined people protesting Maduro’s planned swearing-in ceremony. Her and González’s inability to stop Maduro from taking the oath of office again led to a decline in support.
People’s trust has only shrunk since then, primarily over Machado’s unquestionable support for Trump, including the large U.S. maritime deployment in the Caribbean that has carried out deadly strikes off the coast of Venezuela. This has led to fresh divisions within the opposition.
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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
